Mary Ellen Trainor

Mary Ellen Trainor, the actress known for her role as the mother in “Goonies,” died from complications of pancreatic cancer at her home in California on May 20, 2015. She was 62. A memorial service will be held on June 19th at Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Church in Montecito, CA.

She was born in San Francisco and received her degree in broadcast journalism from San Diego State University. That’s where she met her close friend, Kathleen Kennedy, current president of Lucasfilm, who encouraged her to pursue a career in movies. Trainor began as a production assistant, and that’s how she met her future husband, writer and director Robert Zemeckis. He cast her in some of his films, and the first one was “Romancing the Stone.” She went on to have recurring roles in all of the “Lethal Weapon” movies and had parts in “Die Hard,” “Forrest Gump,” and “Back to the Future.”

Zemeckis and Trainor married in 1980 but got divorced 20 years later. They have one son, Alexander, whom Daniel Amen knows personally.